


Midgar is No Thunderstorm

by klioud



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gun Violence, Inspired by Tenki no Ko | Weathering With You, Introspection, Love, Mentioned Barret Wallace, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Drowning, Minor Appearance by Tifa Lockhart, mentions of body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23346502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klioud/pseuds/klioud
Summary: 天気の子 | Tenki no Ko | Weathering With You-inspired AU. Ficlet Collection.In the waterlogged streets of Midgar, a runaway meets a weather maiden.It makes a twisted sort of sense for things to end this way: for her to be the final droplet of Midgar's once-incessant rain. Sunlight will bleed across the sky as soon as she bleeds on the pavement below. The contortionist that is her optimism tries to reframe this as one final thrill. If Aerith just closes her eyes, she could be skydiving for the first time in her life.It would also be her last.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Cloud Strife
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	1. Lightning

Cloud dreams.

The gun has its own heartbeat in his hands. It pulsates in the trigger and jostles his pointer finger. Jostles his lungs so that he pants. His visible breath curls in on itself as the cold rain cuts through it. A realisation just as cold cuts through him.

The gun is _real._

For all that he already knew this, Cloud had not understood what it might mean. Vague ideas as to how a gun ended up in a trash bin had drifted across his mind when he wiped the dirty bits of this and that from its surface. Midgar was rife with crime: it would not surprise him if what he held in his hands had been disposed of after taking a life.

Cloud had just not thought that he would ever be the one to do the taking.

That he believed he held no illusions about Midgar is nothing less than embarrassing. It had not seemed possible for reality to be worse than its reputation. Even as far away as his hometown of Nibelheim, the people there called Midgar a _thunderstorm of a city_. Just the first few hours spent here had been enough to confirm the rumours: this place is as cold and unrelenting as the rainfall that greeted Cloud upon his arrival in the bay. It is every bit as thrilling as the first peal of thunder that cracked the tension in his bones open like the glass chamber of a glowstick.

He should have known what else Midgar was when the storm and the sea had nearly swept him from the ferry's deck.

If it had not been for Mr. Wallace, maybe Cloud would have known better. His prosthetic hand had felt cool against Cloud's bare arm as the man pulled him under the cover of the upper deck. Somehow, being berated by Mr. Wallace for his recklessness had made Cloud think that Midgar might not be as unfriendly as he first imagined.

It hits him now how wrong he was to think that Midgar's lightning was made up of neon lights and the rapid pace of all who walked under them. Feeling as metallic as the gun in his hands, Cloud anticipates the strike.

The stranger straddling him now is no lightning. The blows he landed earlier on Cloud are something like the smell of ozone: a threat. Shaking with indignation, the man lunges for the gun. 

Cloud fires.

The recoil takes Cloud by surprise. He is still flinching from it when his finger pulls the trigger a second time. Each bullet is a raindrop and the man nothing more than breath. 

His heartbeat thunders in his ears as the man collapses sideways.

Midgar is not a thunderstorm, Cloud knows.

He wakes up as one.


	2. Eggshell

Aerith does not know where Cloud's faith in her comes from.

It is hard to say what possessed her to reveal to him her power. For all that adrenaline was the usual suspect, Aerith later found when she shut her eyes that night that all she could recall was his face. 

His expression had been something like a bird's egg dashed upon concrete. The gun skidded across the filthy floor of the abandoned building as if it were a piece of eggshell. A feeling almost like déjà vu had gripped Aerith then. It led her as she led him up the dilapidated stairway to the shrine.

The sunlight answered her when she asked it to. Wreathed in it, Aerith had turned to look at Cloud. In that moment, she thought that her power might not be just as pointless as it was incredible.

When she first accepted Cloud's business proposal, Aerith suspected that she would see others wear the exact same expression he had on that day. Cloud handles their website and keeps her company while they travel between store openings and marriage proposals and birthday parties. As she calls sunlight to wherever she stands, Aerith sees in her clients' expressions admiration and astonishment. The relief and the joy that softens their faces is warmer than the sunshine itself.

Nonetheless, nothing has really compared to his face back then. 

Cloud had looked at her with eyes so wide and blue she forgot which way was up. His hair was daylight and the shape of his mouth something like an egg hatching. It looked like he was being born again.

It made Aerith think that, maybe, she had been reborn too.


	3. Drowning

Sobbing into the heels of his hands the entire drive to the police station had left Cloud feeling bare.

It was not that Cloud had cried all that he could: it was that he had cried enough to feel submerged. Inside his chest, his waterlogged heart is almost an anchor. The tears had washed away all his faculties but those most primal. Instinct warned him that he might just drown.

Long ago, Cloud feared he would suffocate if he were to stay in arid Nibelheim. Everything within him had urged Cloud to flee with little more than what his school-issued backpack could carry.

The memory would be laughable if he only had the oxygen to spare.

Just as he did back then, Cloud permits this primordial sense to direct him now. When his eye spies an opening between the officers half-turned away from him and the interrogation room door, he scampers through it and down the well-lit hallway without a second thought.

Ideas occur to him as rapid as he breathes: he yanks on the leaves of a potted palm lily to topple it behind his heels. Swings an arm out into a pyramid of cardboard boxes to spill their contents between him and his pursuers. Confused and aggravated voices rumble beneath the near-deafening sound of his heartbeat and his squeaking runners.

Practically vaulting down the two flights of stairs at the end of the hallway, Cloud's shoes hit the lobby's linoleum floor with a loud splat. To his luck, the lobby is as almost as empty as it was when he first came in all those agonising minutes ago. Daylight falls through the water-stained glass doors ahead. 

Like a bullet, Cloud bolts for the exit.

Somebody in uniform steps through the automatic doors. In the half-second before contact, Cloud commits. He drops his shoulder. Pushes out an elbow. The impact sends the stranger stumbling sideways out of his peripheral vision. 

In the next second, direct sunlight sends everything outside of view.

Blinking hard, Cloud staggers in what he hopes is the right direction. Water permeates his shoes and soaks the hem of his pants. It takes the shade of his hand and several erratic heartbeats for the flash blindness to pass. Once he can see again, Cloud breaks into another all-out run. He can wait a minute to figure out if he is headed in the right direction: what matters now is gaining as much of a lead as he can on the police.

The first street sign he sights gives him all the information he needs. While work had never brought him anywhere near a city precinct, Cloud still made mental notes of their locations. As a missing person who did not want to be found, avoiding the police had been a pretty good idea. His mind draws what he thinks will be the fastest route to that ramshackle shrine. The police might know Midgar better than he does, but they do not know where the shrine is.

His boyhood in Nibelheim finally comes in handy: all the time he spent in that backwater with only the mountainous trails to break up the monotony has culminated in this. Pushing his lungs to their limits as he ran from one end of the island to the other proves to have been an invaluable pastime. The ankle-deep water that fills the streets has his lungs and legs working twice as hard as before.

By some miracle, Tifa arrives. Her underbone motorcycle cuts through the water as her voice does the air.

“Cloud!”

The motorcycle slows as it nears him, but does not entirely stop. That suits Cloud fine. Stopping is synonymous with drowning.

“The police called and―”

“Hey, stop right there!” someone yells.

Cloud does not spare his chasers a glance. Swinging a leg over the side of the underbone, he grips Tifa's shoulders. In all his time working alongside her under Mr. Wallace, she has shown herself to be quick on the uptake. 

“W-where to?” says Tifa.

“Aerith,” he breathes. Then he realises how vague and unhelpful a direction that is. “Loveless Avenue. Can you get me there?”

Tifa nods and jams her thumb against the accelerator. The sound of the wheels spraying water smothers the shouting behind them.

For as fast as the motorcycle moves, it still feels too slow. What water is not in their splash radius tranquilly reflects the clear sky. It is hard to imagine that this is what Aerith vanished for: this dry sunlight colder than any rain.

He cannot imagine sunlight ever being warm again. 

Not if it came at this price.

One way or another, Cloud fears he will be without her. No matter his fantasies of escaping Midgar with Aerith, he knows the police will catch up with him eventually. Even after all these months, thinking more than a step or two ahead is still not his strong suit.

It had been this failure that saw him arrive in Midgar with few plans beyond discovering his own latent greatness. He had instead found himself rendered powerless time and time again. Even with a gun in his hand, Cloud had felt unarmed. In pulling the trigger, Midgar reshaped him.

This city seemed to do that to people. Rain clouds loitered inside even Mr. Wallace and Tifa. Cloud caught sight of their shadows when Mr. Wallace's almost-daughter had disappeared behind the tinted glass of her legal guardian's car. He saw them in the way Tifa worried at her lip and triple-tapped away from something on her phone.

Rain clouds brewed inside Aerith too. Though she could part a storm with just a prayer, the one hidden behind her smile proved the harder to dispel. It was like that was where the rain went when she made it disappear. He would have thought it no more than a metaphor if she had not shown him the night before how much of her body had become pure water. 

If only he had her power: but not the one that made it possible for her to become the _sunshine girl._ What he ached for was that which made him her business partner. As miraculous as her power to stop the rain was, it had nothing on how she sundered the storms inside him with just a look.

All he wants now is for sunlight to shine through from behind her smile. 

That would be enough.


	4. Storm

Aerith falls head-first through the clouds.

It makes a twisted sort of sense for things to end this way: for her to be the final droplet of Midgar's once-incessant rain. Sunlight will bleed across the sky as soon as she bleeds on the pavement below. The contortionist that is her optimism tries to reframe this as one final thrill. If Aerith just closes her eyes, she could be skydiving for the first time in her life.

It would also be her last.

“Aer―!”

Putting her hands together, Aerith prays to what or whomever gave her the power to clear the skies that she may ward off just one more cloud. As unprepared for death as she is, there needs be only one sacrifice.

Not two.

“Aerith!”

His voice draws her gaze up past her feet. Cloud is as his namesake: a thing carrying the instruments of a storm. With his arms pinned to his sides, he cuts through the sky as lightning. Before she has a chance to question her instincts, Aerith throws her own arms wide. 

Only once he is eye to eye with her does Aerith realise what she has done.

Flinging his arms out to slow his descent, Cloud lets thunder loose.

“If you wanna live, then live!” 

A thing somewhere inside her cracks.

“But this― it's the only way.” Her voice is so small that she can hardly hear herself.

“It's not― you're not―” Something greater than the wind fights Cloud for his words. A frustrated roar erupts from his lips. Aerith finds herself envious of the sound. “If wanting to live is selfish, be selfish! It isn't any more selfish than them wanting you to die!”

Maybe this is how it feels to be struck by lightning. Every lifelong dream and passing whim is red-hot inside her.

“But...”

Whatever Aerith means to say next burns down to nothing on her tongue. So will the rest of her, if it does not rain.

Cloud grabs her hands and pushes them together. The heat of his palms thrill through her as he shouts.

“Pray for yourself!”

Her eyes meet his. Once, Aerith had thought of herself and him as a fledglings fresh from their eggs. _Soaring_ is the only word that describes how she had felt these many months since. She had a job only she could do that revealed more smiles than sunlight. Had made friends whose warm laughter became the updraught under her wings.

She had an endless sky to share with Cloud.

That her absence could turn the sky blue for them all had offered her some comfort.

Such comfort disappears when facing him. With his brow furrowed like an arcus cloud, he is a thing that has no need for blue skies. Cloud is a storm in and of himself. He makes Aerith think that, maybe, she could be a storm too.

Drawing nearer to Cloud, she rests her forehead against his.

Aerith knows what she wants. It is just a question of if she can have it. Just a question of if she is worthy of forgiveness.

* * *

Cloud wakes.

He cannot tell if it is sweat or rain that has soaked his clothing through. Desperately, he hopes it is the latter as he rolls onto his back to look up at the sky.

He has had enough sunshine for a lifetime.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for your time!


End file.
